


Matching Pair

by thestarryknight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Magical Portraits, One Shot, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-Canon, unusual careers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarryknight/pseuds/thestarryknight
Summary: Harry Potter was possibly the last person Draco had expected to find standing at the foot of his favorite portrait at the Tate Magique. And yet, there he is, looking incredibly fit and monopolizing the attentions of the portrait.  It's not bloody fair.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 58
Kudos: 245





	Matching Pair

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for clicking in to read my first finished fic in many years. It’s a pleasure to share this with you and to get to join the fandom more vocally!
> 
> Many thanks to [lastontheboat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastontheboat/pseuds/lastontheboat) for the wonderful beta :) This fic is for [gryffindorhearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffindorhearts/pseuds/gryffindorhearts), who has inspired this curator Draco. 
> 
> See endnotes for some fun portrait references/inspo.

Harry _bloody_ Potter is standing right there, on the third floor of the Tate Magique, with his hands pressed behind his back, peering up at the inky shades of a young woman’s portrait. His dark hair is shorn close at the sides and shaggy at the top and he’s wearing a pair of jeans (stupid, black denim jeans to the Tate , for Merlin’s sake), and a shirt that looks like it might be made from fae-fabric. It’s not bloody fair, because he looks chic and hip and like he’s meant to be there.

And he is most certainly not meant to be there. It has been ten years since Potter moved to the States. Ten years since Draco had to be concerned about running into him. Ten bloody years of working hard and filling his life up with so many beautiful things and wonderful people. He hasn’t even checked up on Potter in months.Had just assumed he would be minding his own business off in America and wouldn’t bother coming back here. And yet -- here he is, ogling Draco’s favorite portrait as if he has any bloody right to do so. 

Dame Myfanwy Michaels smiles imperiously down at Potter and – _it can’t be_ \-- she is speaking with him! Draco’s Myfanwy, who wholeheartedly refuses to acknowledge a single of his colleagues, his Myfanwy, with whom he had begged and pleaded to be able to bring her into this gallery (and she is a bit vain, isn’t she, or she wouldn’t have agreed no matter what Draco had offered). That same Myfanwy Michaels is giving Potter an inviting nod, tilting her thick waves of hair down towards him as she listens to him. And Potter is speaking animatedly back, in a soft tone that Draco can’t quite make out from his position at the entry to the gallery.

Myfanwy looks up and Draco cannot hide fast enough. Potter turns. Draco presses his hands neatly over his thick black waistcoat, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle and glances up. Potter is still staring at him. Well. It can’t possibly get more awkward than this, can it?

Draco steps fully into the gallery, offering a short wave to the portrait of the little girl with her red book clasped in one hand just inside the door. She’s another favorite of his, and she likes to read to him from her book when he’s feeling lonely. But, to pause and speak to her would be to put off the inevitable. Clearing his throat, he walks closer to Potter, keeping his hands neatly clasped behind him, his jaw tight.

And then Potter smiles, and Draco thinks he might just be having a stroke after all. 

“Good lord,” he mutters, turning his eyes from Potter to Myfanwy. She gives him a wide smile, and Draco is quite sure she would have been in Slytherin, had she had the opportunity. 

“My lady,” he says, inclining his head. “How are you today, Dame Michaels?” He steps closer to her, standing now beside Potter and resolutely ignoring him.

She rolls her eyes at him, a habit she has picked up from the Tate’s younger visitors, Draco is sure. “We were having a lovely conversation, darling,” she drawls, “Harry here has been giving me some wonderful stories.”

Draco lets his eyes flick over to Potter for the briefest of instances. He doesn’t usually like to stand so close to this painting, as he finds the impressionistic brushstrokes to be distracting this close. The artist, a rather mediocre fellow in Draco’s opinion, had used large, thick strokes of color all over the canvas. Myfanwy is painted off-center, awkwardly, as if the painter had meant to fill in the rest of the canvas but never did. So close to it, Draco could see the lines of the brush in the paint, obscuring Myfanwy’s high cheekbones and imperious eyes. From another step or two back, the subtleties of the work became more obvious. Leave it to Potter to not know how to look at a painting.

“Stories,” Draco scoffs, “Right. Was he regaling you with his schoolboy antics? The same old story we’ve all heard so many times.”

Potter begins to protest, but Myfanwy interrupts them both. “Hardly,” she denies, lifting a black-gloved hand to shake at Draco. “You might consider putting away your attitude, darling, because this one might have some stories for you too.” Her lips curl into a devious smile. “After all, didn’t you suggest coming out for a visit might do me some good?”

“I only meant that you’ve been staring at Old George in storage for half a decade, and you might as well—”

“Yes, yes,” she shakes her head at him. “Go on, Mister Potter. Tell him what you were explaining to me.”

“Er—” Potter begins, eloquently. Draco snorts, turning away and crossing his arms. The nerve. “Hi, Draco,” he says, nervous green eyes flicking to meet Draco’s.

His own name in Potter’s mouth hits him like a _Stupefy_ to the chest. It flows off of his tongue like he’s said it a thousand times, like it belongs there. Draco actually stumbles backwards in shock, faltering on one neat black boot. Eyes narrowed at Potter, he tries to stare through him, to understand why and what the fuck and every other question swirling around his mind.

“Er-- Malfoy. I thought-- well, no matter. Right. Sorry.” Potter chews on his lip, eyes flicking at Draco and away again, back to Myfanwy. “See,” Potter goes on, “I’ve been doing a good bit of research on the Woodman family. For a client, you know, I’ve been doing more of that sort of thing.”

Draco rolls his eyes. Yes, he did know that Potter had taken up with a genealogical business (hardly real history, if you asked Draco), and in fact, Potter was understating his work. Of course the git would bring it up within the first five minutes of speaking. Leave it to him to shove his ridiculously wonderful life off in America in Draco’s face at the first chance.

“And, er, had found a bit of a stuck point. With Myfanwy, and,” he smiles gently at the regal woman, “And with your partner.”

Draco is still replaying Potter calling him by his first name -- it’s been ten years -- that he nearly misses what Potter is saying. _The utter nerve_ he’s muttering under his breath as what he’s implied sinks in. “Partner?” he asks Myfanwy. “You’ve never mentioned.”

“I have not,” she answers, voice with a soft edge that warns Draco when he is getting close to a topic she will not broach. They stare at one another for a long moment, Draco debating whether or not to push the issue, and Myfanwy daring him to speak his mind.

Potter breaks their stalemate with a soft cough. “Like I said,” he begins, looking nervously between them, “I’ve been working on the Boston branch of the Woodman family. You know. It’s my current commission, right? Er-- well, I finished their work and sent it off, but something kept bugging me.”

At his words, Myfanwy has broken her stare with Draco, looking downcast at her hands. He could swear he can spot the tiniest hint of a tear at the corner of her eye, though there’s not a speck of blue in the work. 

“I kept finding _M.M. accompanied me on this trip_ and _M.M. came overseas_ on that trip -- and, and this was far too contemporary for it to matter for the work I was doing anyway, but I just got so fascinated by this _M.M._ person, I needed to find out who they were --”

“Your research skills and focus have barely improved since your time skulking around the Black Family Archives,” Malfoy drawled. He didn’t look over at the other man, eyes trained on Myfanwy’s neat hands folding and unfolding in the portrait in front of them. 

“You know very well I wasn’t skulking,” Potter harumphs, crossing his arms. “And you were right there along with me, so don’t even--” 

“The point, Potter.”

“Well, _then_ I found a passenger ship ticket-- from the R.M.S. Majestic,” and between them, Myfanwy’s quiet gasp sounds like a clap of thunder. Draco blinks at her. She has never shown so much emotion or engagement in the ten years he’s spent chatting with her. And here she is, with more of a story, more of a history than he had ever known. 

Potter tugs a tiny, pocket-sized notebook out of his trousers, flicking through messy notes and random scribbles. “There were _two_ tickets, actually,” he says, ever-so-gently, eyes on Myfanwy. “One for a _Myfanwy Michaels…”_

“And one for Sarah Woodman,” she echoes, the barest brush of a breath. She raises her cool, inky eyes to Draco’s for a brief moment and returns to her portrait-neutral position, shoulders proud and chin set. As if she is awaiting his judgement.

There are approximately one million ideas and thoughts circling through Draco’s head. What comes out is not, as he had hoped, a nice bit of reassurance for Myfanwy, or a question about her travels, or about Sarah. Instead, he quite inelegantly turns to Potter and asks, “So you fucked right off to Boston then, Potter? Of all places?”

The gallery is silent for a brief moment. It’s about the only relief Draco gets before Potter snorts at him, Myfanwy shakes her head, and the portrait to her right bursts into guffawing laughter. 

“Stop eavesdropping, Sir Claude,” Draco huffs, trying and failing not to turn red. In his own Merlin-fucking gallery in his own place of work , Potter is showing him up. It’s simply not fair. “And now, you’re back here. After ten years of nothing.”

Somewhere between debating turning on his heel and going back into his little office to escape and hexing Potter right in the perfectly sculpted jaw, Potter unbelievably starts to speak again.

“There’s a-- er, another portrait. I think a matched pair, though I don’t have quite an eye for it,” he nods to Myfanwy, “But they’re the same size, same colors. Sarah’s is a bit more, uh,” he looks rueful, “Exuberant? There’s more yellow, I think. And this really vibrant shade of orange, more like a salmon?” He points to a tiny flash of orange in Myfanwy’s dress, easily overlooked in the more somber tones of the portrait. “This color, I think.”

And Draco can see it now. The yellow shade in the background which had seemed to allude to a faded parchment brought to life by a vibrant partner painting. The soft oranges underlying the brown-black of Myfanwy’s long dress, given boldness by rich colors beside it. The way Myfanwy seems to be just off from a three-quarter, not quite positioned high enough or to the right enough in the canvas. She’s never been sat wrong. She’s been missing her other half.

“Where is she?” he asks out loud, distracted as his eyes trace over the pine-wood frame. It’s more ornate than others of the period, but he’s quite sure it’s original. It would make so much more sense if Myfanwy and her partner were framed and sat across a parlor room, rather than an overmantle, as a single portrait might hang. 

“Boston,” Myfanwy whispers, just barely audible.

Harry nods, flipping to a page in his notebook. He’s made a small sketch of a striking woman, framed and seated as if to face Myfanwy’s portrait. In his rough lines, the woman’s low-cut dress is fashionable and neat, and the piles of her long hair curled and knotted atop her head nod to the trend just burgeoning then. “She’s beautiful,” he whispers, stepping just closer to Potter.

Myfanwy makes a small sound at the back of her throat -- somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Draco looks at her, but she shakes her head. He turns to Potter, barely noticing how close they’ve come together. He holds the sketch up between them, and they compare it to Myfanwy. Same scale, same positioning. There’s no sense of color in the rough pencil lines, but Draco can see the echoed ideas of shading -- the bright folds of Sarah’s shiny taffeta skirt echoed in inverse in the deep creases of Myfanwy’s heavier broadcloth dress.

“She’s absolutely beautiful,” he says again, looking up at Myfanwy.

“She is,” Potter echoes, “The gallery she’s in -- her portrait, at least -- it’s a lot like this one, Ms. Michaels,” he says quietly. “They’ve got these tan-brown walls, and giant soft benches, so you can just sit and look at the portraits for hours and no one tells you off.”

“Get told off frequently, Potter?” Draco mutters, still feeling rather uneasy as he tries to process all of this new information. He can hear the slightest offness to Potter’s old Londoner accent, his _a’s_ stretched out and _r’s_ dropped. Like a proper Bostonian. Like he’s well and truly forgotten about him and London and everything here he was meant to be part of. Potter glances over at him, but turns quickly back to Myfanwy, eyes steadfastly forward.

“She’s so kind, Ms. Michaels. So beautiful, and so kind.” 

Myfanwy nods faintly, colors shifting in the brushstrokes ever so. There’s a soft moment, then, as Draco looks at Potter, and Potter looks at Myfanwy, and Myfanwy looks off into the corner of her frame as if she can visualize Sarah Woodman sitting there beside her. The ache in her heart sits heavily in Draco’s stomach, like he too is waiting for Sarah to appear, like she’s a hair too far out of his peripheral vision.

“We weren’t partners,” she starts in the quietest of voices, “Not in your sense of the word. We didn’t-- didn’t think like that, for most of it.” They both look at her, shoulders nearly touching. Draco can feel Potter’s warmth just barely out of reach.

“At least, not until she was meant to go back to America to stay. That night-- that’s when it all changed.”

“In 1901,” Potter echoes. “When she moved to marry George Gordon III.”

“August 3, 1901,” Myfanwy nods, voice cracking, “I will remember that day for the rest of my life.”

Draco could pick up the tiniest hint of a blush rising on her cheeks as the careful brushstrokes around her high bones shifted ever-so-slightly. Almost imperceptible to the untrained eye, but then, the untrained eye is rarely tracking the movement of the paint across the surface of a canvas when speaking to the sitter. 

“We were sharing a little set of rooms in St. Ives, and you could see the water from the little balcony. It was like blue glass shifting over itself, and you could smell it in the air like salt and clear air and rainstorms.” She is more animated than Draco has ever seen her, speaking with such vigor she almost feels real and unpainted. “It was so beautiful. We would go there, every long summer, whenever her aunt and uncle could spare her. Even when they couldn’t, when she was avoiding debutante balls and all that mess.”

“Her parents died of a wizarding strand of tuberculosis, very young. She lived with her uncle in Boston,” Potter whispers to him, as if he needs the explanation to understand the story. Draco bites his lip and says nothing.

“Our portraits,” she starts, and blinks several times, pressing her hand to her chest as if she can feel the heartache in the paint lines, “Were a commission from a friend. A dear, dear fellow. That last trip to St. Ives was spent largely in his studio, laughing and sipping gin cocktails,” the sound of tears catches in her throat. “And that last day. That last day. She had received the letter two weeks before, had bought herself the ticket, but didn’t tell me. She knew. She knew she was going back to Boston and wouldn’t return to St. Ives.”

“Oh,” Draco says, wishing he could reach out to press his fingers against the back of her thin, bony hand. “Oh, Myfanwy, my dearest friend.”

Without realizing it, he has shifted closer to the portrait, just as Potter has. The backs of their hands brush against one another and Draco catches Potter’s ridiculously green eyes shiny and bright when he looks down at their closeness. Neither of them move away, and Draco could swear he can hear Potter’s warm heartbeat beside him, that’s how close they are.

“We had one night to be together,” she clears her throat, blinking away unshed tears, “Like that, like partners do. I found the letter tied up neat with a note of her own. _I’ve a train to London and a ship to Boston, my treasure_ \-- treasure, that’s what she called me -- _will write when I arrive._ ”

Potter and Myfanwy both fall silent. Draco looks between them. The gallery is deathly quiet around them, even the other portraits have fallen into unmoving silence. Not a twitch of brushstroke fills the air, only the barely-audible sound of Draco and Potter’s breathing.

“But-- that can’t be it,” Draco says. “She went off to Boston, and then what?”

Potter looks positively morose as he shakes his head ever-so-slowly back and forth. “Sarah and George were married in November of 1901,” he chews on his lip, “They had three kids, it seems, or possibly an extra cousin, though the records are a bit…" He waves a hand vaguely.

“But she-- she must have written to you,” Draco says, barely a whisper.

“Not a word,” Myfanwy answers, tucking the bright white lace of a handkerchief back into her pocket.

“She must have.” He shakes his head, heart aching. “She called you treasure, didn’t she?”

Myfanwy shakes her head, and Draco can see her beginning to compose herself again, straightening the lines of her lacy black gloves, smoothing the lines that have appeared as strokes of thick black paint in her skirt where she clutched at the fabric. Her jaw is set.

“I went to visit our friend, the artist. We were meant to be picking up the portraits later that week -- before she told me, of course. And she’d already been by. Gave him twice what we owed left on the commission and said they were both for me. And that was that.”

“But--” Draco steps away from the wall, away from Potter. “But that can’t be it. Did you go to Boston to try to find her? How did her portrait end up there? Did you write? It can’t just end. Potter, what is the meaning of this?”

Potter shrugs, eyes on Myfanwy. “As far as I’ve read, you never did come back to Boston, did you?” 

“She made her position clear with her silence.”

“And yet, you sent off the portrait?” Potter asks, cocking his head.

Myfanwy looks up at them both, then, finally, with a wry smile and a sheepish expression. “It was a bit underhanded of me, I suppose. I sent it to her husband.”

Draco flushes at the sheer visual of her lover’s husband unwrapping a gorgeous portrait of his wife, clearly missing a second half. No artist could have made a portrait of the husband that would ever have completed the set, so Sarah’s likeness was due to hang alone. If hung, it would be a bleak reminder to both of them of what she had left behind in St. Ives. And if not, it would sit in the closet or the cellar, a secret second life bidden into shadows.

“And?” Draco asks, looking between them.

“And he immediately donated it. The Museum of Fine Arts took it straight away and that was that. It’s been there ever since,” Potter answers. 

He looks up at Myfanwy. “She told me about you, you know.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Told me she regretted not writing back to you. That you might have liked to meet her daughter. Or her son,” he steps closer, “Casper Woodman Gordon.”

Her face flashes pink and Draco wonders at the shadows maintained in the paint. What other colors had he not noticed before? She frowns down at Potter. 

“One who treasures,” she whispers. “That’s what Casper means.”

“She didn’t forget you,” Potter echoes back, equally quiet. “How could she have forgotten you? You were her treasure.” But he’s not looking at Myfanwy now, Draco realizes, as he looks between them again. He’s looking at Draco.

“Maybe we can…” Draco begins, distracted. “Find a way to get a loan. Or vice versa.” His voice sounds far away from himself. Potter is staring at him with those sharp green eyes that have always made him feel at once on stage and terrified and equally locked in a silent room with only the two of them for company. “Bring you two together again,” he hears himself saying to Myfanwy.

“I didn’t mean to let it go so long,” Potter starts, looking down at his hands. One rough finger is tracing over the cover of his tiny notebook, little circles like he’s imagining how that hand had -- for one night -- traced those same circles over Draco’s thigh.

“You ought not have gone at all,” Draco snaps, then swallows and looks back at Myfanwy. But rather than the sad weariness he had expected to find writ across her face, she is smiling wryly down at them. He rolls his eyes at her. 

“Look, Potter,” he acquiesces, voice growing quiet. “I know it was only one night and really, I mean. It’s been ten years. I know that we didn’t have any expectations for each other--”

“But one night is enough.” Potter interrupts. “One night, like partners do, that’s enough.” He reaches out, just a few centimeters, until the backs of their hands are again but millimeters apart and Draco can feel the hair on his hand standing up against the hair on Potter’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Draco,” he whispers, just for the two of them. “I am.”

Draco pulls his hand away from Potter’s, frowning and crossing his arms. His shoulders form a hard line, and his chest is so tight it feels like he is holding his breath. And maybe he is. He lets it all gust out of him, shaking his head. “Ten years, Potter.”

“Mr. Malfoy,” Myfanwy interrupts, before he can go much further. Her voice has regained her natural imperiousness, and Draco is reminded -- frighteningly -- of his mother. He looks up at her. “I do not tell my story for mere entertainment. I hope you will permit your Sarah to change his fate in the way that mine did not. Before you are decorating the walls of a dullish museum, oceans away from one another.”

“You’re hardly just decoration,” Draco scoffs at her, though his eyes are on Potter and he’s stepping slightly closer, so their shoulders brush once more.

“Hardly,” Potter echoes, under his breath. The back of his fingers brush against Draco’s and his breath catches in his throat audibly. His eyes meet shining green and it's as if the ten years have passed in a blink.

“Well, Harry,” Draco begins, the corner of his mouth twitching, “I suppose I might entertain an apology. If given properly, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry nods, and takes Draco's hand in his own, knitting their fingers neatly together.

**Author's Note:**

> The portraits discussed here are vaguely inspired by the work of Romaine Brooks (see [this link (warning for some nsfw lovely artistic nudes on this link)](https://artssummary.com/2016/06/18/the-art-of-romaine-brooks-at-smithsonian-american-art-museum-june-17-october-2-2016/), especially Madame Errazuris (1908-10). And [this one](https://www.jssgallery.org/Other_Artists/Romaine_Brooks/Self-Portrait_1905.jpg) by Romaine Brooks: (Self-Portrait, 1905, Collection Lucile Audouy, Paris -- it’s in a private collection so there’s not so many great photos of it, but I think it’s stunning!). And [this one a bit too](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Natalie_Barney_in_Fur_Cape.jpg/800px-Natalie_Barney_in_Fur_Cape.jpg), for Sarah’s by Alice Pike Barney. 
> 
> Brooks was an incredible queer artist who was in a polyamorous relationship with the sitter of this third portrait, Natalie Barney in Paris. She spent the first few years of her artistic career in St. Ives, hence the inspiration for our dear Myfanwy and Sarah! 
> 
> ETA: One of my commenters pointed out the title's similarity to another Drarry fic -- it's [Matched Set](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7176989) by the incredibly Astolat. I've altered my title just slightly so it's not a duplicate, as the similarity was not my intention (and the fics are not similar in topic at all anyway).
> 
> Thank you for reading!! <3


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